sins of the fathers or to hear her roar
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: The power of love. Love. How rich, right? How awkwardly girlish could you get.


**sins of the father(s); or to hear her roar**

**Summary: **The power of love. Love. How rich, right?

How awkwardly girlish could you get.

**Prompt:** At The Close: A HP Wars Comment Ficathon: Harry - postwar - How do you reconcile the flaws of your father, and your mother's soul mate that wasn't him?  
**Recipient:** deslea  
**Summary:** A look at Harry's several male influences and the one outdoing them all.  
**Spoilers:** Spoilers for the whole series  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and his entire universe belongs to J.K. Rowling.

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**I. he was told from nearly the beginning - **

_after they turned his world upside, after they gave him magic and dreams and monsters to send any child running_- that love was the greatest of all. And he was a walking testament to that.

The power of love. Love. How rich, right?  
How awkwardly girlish could you get.

Except that it saved his life. Again. And Again.  
Spells wore away. Magic fizzled eventually.

And yet. This did not. This love.  
This things like hooks in his skin.

_(The ceaseless roar of a dead lioness.)_

**II. his father's name was james potter; **

Correction.

The man who's lineage he comes from was named James Potter. People tell him they look alike, with their hair and gangly limbs and knobby knees and the glasses. The way they fly. Their reckless enthusiasm and courage, bravery and loyalty toward friends.

But a picture does make **A Father**.

And pictures cannot speak.

_(But his skin, his skin with the echo of her pleas,  
makes this a lie, too, doesn't it?)_

**III. if he had a father; **

and Harry Potter is not certain with

_Vernon Dursley, who saw him as less than a cast away,  
and James Potter, a rambunctious boy who turned into a hero,  
and Sirius Black, a dream touched only to be ripped away,_

that he knows what this word 'father' means, really truly means

- but it was probably Albus Dumbledore.

Except for all his love and wisdom ( _and he was wise, and he was sure he did care at least_ ), Albus Dumbledore had been training a hero, preparing a baby in swaddling clothes, and a twelve-year-old boy in hand me down sweaters, to give himself up to sacrifice, to be willing, to be noble enough, to choose, to understand _he had to die_.

He had been a man made of lies, and secrets.  
A maze of love and loyalties lost.

A twisted past of pieces.

But he'd been there.  
All those years.

_(But even when his own family had worked right, love betrayed -_

Love earned that night:

The two very last deaths,

a decade of torture for one man,  
a decade of solitude for another,  
a decade of castigation for a child.)

**IV. love, harry knows, is not always kind;**

it is not easy or gentle, like that Corinthians quote girls like to write in curly letters and hang up. It steals everything out of you. Keeping you alive when you feel you have absolutely nothing left to go on.

There is no way not to respect Severus Snape after the war. The secrets he kept, the debts he paid, the shame and devastation. But with six years of boiling hatred, there is no way not to hate him, too. Six years of being the punching bag for his father's antics and his mother's freewill.

He knows what Dumbledore would have said.

_Love is a very powerful magic._

The loss of one life changed a man's forever. But, Harry would point out now - now that he has died, now that they have both died, now that everyone who was part of that mad cycle was dead, now that the world was still in shambles and healing - that it took a death to do it still.

That maybe Death is a strong magic mixed Love.  
For himself. For Lupin, and Sirius, even for Snape.

Because. There was still love in it.  
He had loved Lily Potter.  
His Lily Potter. His Mother.

With a depth, she might have never known.

_(Except. She was A Gryffindor._

She chose the life she wanted. Chose.  
Chose the same as Snape Chose The Mark.

She roared before even terror of Voldermort.  
Willing to give her life and essence for Harry.

And all the world trembled before Her Heart.)


End file.
